Book Chapter:An Integrated Conceptual Framework for Visual Social Research Book Chapter

TITLE

An Integrated Conceptual Framework for Visual Social Research

Book Chapter

DATE

19 September 2017

REFERENCE

Pauwels, L. (2011). An integrated conceptual framework for visual social research. In Margolis, E. & Pauwels, L. The SAGE handbook of visual research methods (pp. 3-23). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: 10.4135/9781446268278

Source:

http://methods.sagepub.com .ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/book/sage-hdbk-visual-research-methods/n1.xml

MY SUMMARY

A wide range of visual social research is common in any research, including in health and gender field in order to produce any visual report, to support education module or books, to convince policymakers to solve any concerned issues, and to empower a community to solve their own problem to gain a better life. Researchers can generate the visual outcome by themselves, known as ‘researcher-generated visuals’ or researchers can use other researchers’ visual outcome or visual outcomes that are available for public, like poster, advertisements, videos-known as ‘secondary research uses’ and respondents or participants get involved actively in producing visual outcomes-‘respondent-generated visuals’, like photo-voice, photo elicitation, drawings, and collage. In addition, diverse visual techniques; ‘camera-based imaginary’ (photo, and film) - to gain better understanding complexity on cultures and behaviors- and ‘non-photographic representations’- to focus on ‘abstraction and depictions’ of the outcomes (mapping, drawings, paintings, graffiti, a college, a map). The non-photographic outcome can be performed when photography and video outcomes are not allowed for some conditions, like research on vulnerable groups (HIV positive persons, MSM). This approach can be combined with many types of iconic and symbolic information, such as pictograms, arrows, colors, gradients, and text.

Process, analysis, reflexivity, and interpretation visual outcome aim in order to have a better understanding on some social issues or problems. Visual method analysis can be undertaken based on the depiction of visual data and the content of visual data, the process of visual data production and feedbacks of visual data outcomes. Furthermore, reflexivity is needed for any visual outcomes to be completed with 'personal beliefs, preferences, experiences, characteristics and personal backgrounds 'of researchers. Finally, ethical principles should be applied in any visual social framework: not harm for our subjects/respondents, to provide informed consent for each visual outcome that are difficult to do anonymity on that outcome, to consider the issues of authorship and copyright, to seek permission for other researchers or sources of visual outcomes from secondary data, like advertisements, newspapers or other books

BOOK' CONCLUSION

Conclusion

Acknowledging the stark contrast between the current surge of interest in exploring visual aspects of society by scholars from the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences, and the relatively weak conceptual and methodical basis for realizing this interest in a more widely accepted manner, I have argued for a more integrated and analytical approach to visual research. This serves as a basis for the construction of more explicit, appropriate, and refined visual methodologies. Therefore, this chapter was devoted to the systematic presentation and clarification of a new ‘integrated framework for visual social research’ as represented in Figure 1.1. In addition to providing a synthesis of current research practices in an analytical manner, I sought to offer with this framework a broader and better understanding of the visual production, processing, and communication/dissemination stages of visual research and of the related methodological issues and research design concerns. As such, it may serve as a checklist for starting new research, for assessing current research, or for offering insight into the many options in visual research, assumptions, and consequences.

So the framework is not just an analytical synthesis of existing options and issues, but also embodies a broader, future-directed program for a more visual sociology, aimed at inspiring further and more targeted methodological development. This framework—dense as it may already look—can be made even more detailed (for example, by linking specific ethical issues to specific approaches and techniques, and strategies to deal with these). However, this is exactly what is meant by the assertion that an overall framework may further feed and inspire more detailed and methodological expounding, focused on particular combinations of approaches, both visual and non-visual.

The use of the visual as a data source, or as a medium for capturing, processing, and expressing social scientific knowledge continues to challenge current scholarship as it is both a demanding and rewarding—but hitherto still rather uncommon (non-mainstream) and largely unchartered—territory. Both visual researchers and their diverse audiences should be prepared and educated to continue further along this road. More explicit and transparent methodologies and exemplary visual studies may help visual research to gradually enter the realm of widely accepted options in the study of society.

IMPORTANT QUOTATION IN CHAPTERS

·      Wide use of visual methods in all research subjects and issues, including in health and gender and identity

At present, many types of societal imagery (for example, family pictures, ads, postcards, paintings, newsreels, feature and documentary film, various picture archives, maps, and charts) have been used by social, cultural, and behavioral scientists to study a variety of subjects and issues: labor (Margolis, 1994); school culture (Margolis, 2004; Burke and Grosvenor, 2007); family dynamics (Musello, 1979; Chalfen, 1987; Pauwels, 2008a); traumatic experiences (McAllister, 2006; Gödel, 2007); youth culture (Larson, 1999); stereotyping (Hagaman, 1993); migration (Wright, 2001); nature versus culture (Papson, 1991; Suonpää, 2000; Bousé, 2003); deviance (Lackey, 2001); race and ethnicity (Mellinger, 1992; Tomaselli and Shepperson, 2002; Grady, 2007); health (Bogdan and Marshal, 1997); gender and identity (Goffman, 1979; Edge, 1998); and globalization (Barndt, 1997). However, many areas of enquiry and many types of visual materials are still waiting to be explored.(p.3)

·      Some terms of how visual outcomes are produced;

o   researchers-generated visuals à researchers have more control for visual production

o   secondary research uses àvisual outcome from other researchers and

o   respondent-generated visuals àrespondents have more control for visual production with their unique (insider) ‘perspectives’ while researchers can do further analysis or make sense of their outcomes

Researcher-generated visuals

Researcher-generated production of visuals in general allows more control over the data-gathering procedures (and ideally more reflexivity) so that more highly contextualized material can be produced.

Secondary Research uses

Researchers may indeed choose to use materials that have been produced by other researchers for similar or different research purposes. This material may be used for comparison with new data or (as a historic source) be revisited by a new researcher for the same purposes or to answer different research questions

Respondent-generated visuals

It is important to note that the respondent-generated material, while offering a unique (insider) perspective, is never an end product, but just an intermediate step in the research. Researchers still need to analyze and make sense of the visual output generated by the respondents; their cultural self-portrayal or vision needs to be verbally or visually framed within the research output (p.3).

Of course not only naturally occurring or non-reactive behavior is a valid subject of research; ‘elicited behavior of both a verbal or visual nature’ may also yield valuable input for research. Researchers can prompt people to react (most often verbally) to visual stimuli (pictures, drawings, artifacts) and use these reactions as input or to correct their research (Collier, 1967; Wagner, 1979; Harper, 2002). Or researchers may even prompt people to produce their own imagery or visual representations as a response to a specific assignment (for example, ‘depict a typical day of your life’). The first technique is known as ‘photo or film elicitation’ (the term ‘visual elicitation’ may be better, since it does not limit this technique to photographic media, but also includes drawing, for example) p. 4. The latter technique whereby the respondents themselves produce imagery or visual representations about aspects of their culture for further use by the researcher is (as stated earlier) best described by the broad category of ‘respondent-generated imagery. (p.4)

·      A chance to depict and analyse the process of producing visual outcomes and its own production outcome to gain better understanding richness and complexity on actions of visual production, including from its cultural perspectives.

Rituals and other highly prescribed activities’ in a society offer very condensed information on important aspects of human organization. Depicting these processes may also benefit from a visual approach, because of its ability to capture the richness and complexity of the event, its capacity to cope with the semiotic hybridity (different types of signs and orders of signification) of the depicted including its cultural specificity, and development over time and space (especially when using continuous visual recording techniques: film or video).

·      Diverse visual techniques; camera-based imaginary (photo, and film) - to gain better understanding complexity on cultures and behaviors- and non-photographic representations- to focus on abstraction and depictions of the outcomes (mapping, drawings, paintings, graffiti, a collage, a map). Non-photograpic outcome can be performed when photograpy and video outcomes are not allowed for some conditions, like research on vulnerable groups (HIV positive persons, MSM). This approach may combine many types of iconic and symbolic information, such as pictograms, arrows, colors, gradients, and text.

Visual sociologists and anthropologists have primarily focused on camera-based imagery (both static and moving). The paramount importance of these kinds of imagery is beyond question, both because of their ubiquity in society, the ease with which they are produced and because of their specific iconic and indexical qualities (mostly understood as their high level of ‘resemblance’ and the ‘natural’ or even ‘causal’ relation to the depicted object). However, researchers may also take advantage of non-(technically) mediated or directly observed aspects of visual culture (signage, architecture) and of studying and using non-photographic representations (such as drawings, paintings, murals, graffiti, maps, charts). In many cases, ‘fixing the shadows,’ however, by producing a permanent (most often photographic) record is helpful or even necessary.

Any visual practice and its products embody a complex meeting of the cultures of the depicted and of the depicter, along with the—again, culturally influenced—intricacies of the representational techniques or the medium. Visuals produced with ‘nonalgorithmic techniques’ (techniques that require many ‘intentional’ choices by the maker, such as drawings: Mitchell, 1992) are readily used as existing data sources (for example, paintings, murals, graffiti, children's drawings). For ‘researcher-generated’ types of imagery, however, this category of imaging techniques is a far less obvious choice. Indeed, social scientists routinely turn to photography and film to record material cultural and human behavior in all of its complexity. Yet in some instances, nonalgorithmic techniques (more intentional or less automated techniques) can be more suited or may even prove to be the only option (for example, to depict concepts or relational constructs as these ‘entities’ cannot be photographed since they have no visual material referent, or in cases where photography is not allowed). Intentional techniques, moreover, may be chosen because they allow simplification and abstraction; photos can be too detailed and particularistic. Intentional techniques also allow the simultaneous application of many different representational codes: for example, a map may combine many types of iconic and symbolic information, such as pictograms, arrows, colors, gradients, and text. The relation between a picture and its g.h,kghjcvkbn eyjkio`   Snaked eye) are used, or when the depicted cannot be observed directly and thus is only ‘available’ as a representation (Pauwels, 2006b).

·      Visual method analysis can be undertaken based on the depiction of visual data and the content of visual data, process of visual data production and feedbacks of visual data outcomes. In addition, analysis during the visual data process may yield unique messages that related to cultures and understand the power and negotiations during the visual production. Finally, feedbacks the visual outcomes may be useful for further analysis process, like video or photos outcomes.

·       

o   The analytical focus will always be determined by the particular research questions being addressed. These research questions may cover a vast number of possible areas of research as long as the right visual angles to answer the questions are found (p.5).

o   In summary, the focus of analysis in visual research can lie on:

1.     the content of a visual representation (the depicted),

2.     its form and style (most often in conjunction with the depicted),

3.     the processes that are related with the production and use of visual representations,

4.     the verbal reactions to visual stimuli.

o   Researchers always need to be aware of the inevitable difference between the depicted (the referent) and the depiction (the visual representation), a difference that can seriously influence or even misinform their views on the depicted. This difference can also become a field of study in its own right: the study of style as a gateway to the norms and values and other immaterial traits of a culture.p.5

o   Operationalizing research questions and foci from visually observable elements may involve deriving data from images in a fairly straightforward way (for example, number of people, distances, cultural inventory of objects) or may require more interpretative decoding (emotional states, complex relations). Such operationalization may implicate the image or visual field as an integrated whole (the spatial organization of a town square, the global impression of a city as a cultural meeting place) or just small parts or aspects of it (clearly defined types of exchange between people, for example, such as a handshake, eye contact, or a nod).-p.5

o   B.1.2. Analyzing Production Processes and Product uses-

1.     Analyzing the processes of image making and the subsequent uses and cultural practices surrounding the use of imagery and visual representations are not the most dominant foci in current visual research, but they too may yield very unique data. Indeed, in some cases the process may be more revealing than the end product.

2.     Next to studying the visual end products, family researchers can also take an interest in the dynamics just before and during the production of a family snap (the directing, posing, negotiations, the technical choices, and the implicit power relations) and the processes by which the snaps are afterward selected, manipulated, and combined with texts in an album or on a website; where, how, and which photos are displayed in the home or distributed among friends and acquaintances, for what reasons, etc. (Chalfen, 1987; Pauwels, 2008a).

o   B.1.3. Analysis of Feedback

Visual stimuli are provided by the researcher to gather factual information about the depicted cultural elements and—a very powerful and unique trait of the visual elicitation technique—to ‘trigger’ more projective information with the respondents (their deeper feelings, opinions). The method of ‘respondent-generated images’ also generates ‘feedback,’ but of a mainly visual nature, and thus this feedback needs to be analyzed both for its content and its form. It is to be considered as a research ‘input’ not an end product, even if it takes the form of a completed film or video. Through detailed analysis, the researcher will try to make sense of it and situate it within the larger framework of the discipline.

o   Chosen theory framework will guide researchers to analyse visual data based on its direction, hypothesis, or ideas to have better understanding to generate meaningful knowledge.

B.2. Theoretical Foundation

As in most types of research, theory usually guides visual data production and analysis. So whether looking at existing visual representations or producing new visual data, both approaches require a solid and fully motivated theoretical grounding. Without theory, our seeing is blind or tends to rest on unexplained views and expectations (implicit theory), which we may even be unaware of. It is fairly naïve to expect that the camera will automatically collect large quantities of relevant data. Theory is needed to give scientific research some direction. It can focus attention on issues which at first sight are not expected to have much significance, but which from a specific stance, hypothesis, or idea, can yield relevant scientific information.

However, the theoretical grounding of a project not only involves the visual analytical side (how to deal with the form and content of the visual products) but also includes the main subject matter or the thematic focus of the project. Researchers who, for instance, study gentrification processes or poverty issues start by selecting particular definitions and aspects of gentrification or poverty theories and research, and combine those in a solid framework that is compatible with the goals of the research and with the particular combination of research methods and techniques.

B.3.4. Nature and Degree of Field Involvement

People may, however, react to being recorded whether or not they know its exact purpose: they may try to hide away, or to perform in front of the camera in less or more explicit ways. When people know they are being recorded they most often display a degree of reactivity. Looking into the camera is the most noticeable, but not necessarily the most significant reaction. This reactivity may even be, or become, the very subject matter of the research.

Many visual researchers have experienced the value of involving the field in a more active and encompassing way (not just during the recording, but before and afterward), which can lead to more ‘participatory and joint forms of production’ (Rouch, 1975). In fact, sometimes this participation of the community under study may be the main objective of the project, which then, rather than having a scientific purpose, seeks to promote community empowerment or activism. In this case, the researcher helps the community realize its goals rather than vice versa, which is normally the case.

Reflexivity

These basic requirements today form part and parcel of a broader call for reflexivity in science, which entails a clear recognition that all knowledge is ‘work in progress,’ incomplete, and perspectivistic (see also Rosaldo, 1989; Ruby, 2000; Pauwels, 2006c). With respect to visual research, reflexivity in particular involves giving a concrete shape to the idea that research is a complex ‘meeting of cultures’ (MacDougall, 1975: 119): to start with the cultures of the researchers (personal beliefs, preferences, experiences, characteristics, cultural backgrounds) and those of the researched, and at a later stage with the cultural stance of the viewers or users of the resulting visual product

Ethical

Principles: not harm for our subjects/respondents, to provide informed consents for each visual outcome that are difficult to do anonymity on that outcome, to consider the issues of authorship and copyright, to seek permission for other researchers or sources of visual outcomes from secondary data, like advertisements, newspapers or other books